Flight 404 Chapter 37

“You mean the two of you don’t know! To tell you the truth, I’d pushed it to the back of my mind, as well. But it’s the reason why all the tourist come here – to see the spot where it happened.

“December 1960 a mid-air collision happened right over the skies of Park Slope at Seventh Avenue and Sterling Place. That picture, he said reaching for the picture that sat on the table between cups of coffee — was taken on that day. Rebecca’s dad was cop back then. It was his idea to drag her out to the crash site so Rebecca could ‘toughen up’ as he put it. My mom made my dad promise on his mother’s grave not to let me anywhere near that crash site. Kind of ironic considering the work I do now.”

Plane crash near Sylvia's Building

“From what I understood, listening to my parents talk, it got pretty grisly out there. When the planes collided, they broke apart spewing bodies and body parts all over the place with most of them charred beyond recognition from the ignited jet fuel.”

“The men of the neighborhood, along with the police and soldiers from the nearby army base formed long lines and walked the crash site searching for remains. You could hear them calling as they went along, “what have you got — body or body parts! Old nightstick had Rebecca right by his side as they marched through the carnage. Not the sort of thing you’d want a twelve year old girl to see.”

Things were never the same after that, especially Rebecca. She changed and not in a good way. For lack of a better way of putting it, Rebecca fell in love with death.

The trouble started with the family cat. Rebecca’s mother, Gretta, had a cat, named Fluffy – a white Persian – I think. Anyway, the damn thing disappeared. Mrs. Schuster searched everywhere for that cat.

“What happened to it?”

“Mrs. Schuster found it under Rebecca’s bed, stuffed in a brown paper bag, disemboweled.”